Allegra Goodman, ISOLA: A Novel
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[0:44]A legra Goodman is the author of Isola, a novel.
[0:48]This is her second time on my podcast.
[0:50]Previously, she was on for her national best-seller Sam, which was a read-with-jenna selection.
[0:56]She's the author of six novels, two short story collections, and a novel for young readers.
[1:01]Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in
[1:05]the O'Henry Awards and Best-American Short Stories.
[1:08]She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her new novel, Isola, has been
[1:13]published by the Dial Press.
[1:14]Welcome, a legra.
[1:15]Thank you for coming back on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss Isola,
[1:19]your latest novel, congratulations.
[1:22]Thank you.
[1:23]Please tell us in our is the general premise of the book, and then I want to dive into
[1:28]this fascination you had with the story and how it wouldn't let you go.
[1:32]The book is, the novel is based on a true story of a young French noblewoman who sails
[1:37]to the New World in 1544, 1544, I think.
[1:43]And she is marooned on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and there's a little bit
[1:50]known there were two contemporary accounts of what happened to her, but they conflict
[1:53]with each other.
[1:54]They know that she was real, they know this happened.
[1:57]So I had a lot of space to imagine her life there in the silent, and I was just fascinated
[2:03]by this whole scenario, so that's how I started writing this book.
[2:08]So in the authors' note at the end, which I only have a whole book of your authors
[2:15]note because it speaks so much to the writing process itself, but you're like, I was
[2:18]writing Sam in the morning, and then I was like, you're like cheating on Sam, the
[2:23]book, by trying to write this book, and then you said you found your way in when you
[2:27]finally figured out her voice and how, and the whole book, you know, it is characterized
[2:33]by this, as if you're listening to this woman speak to you, right?
[2:37]Tell me about that and the whole experience and the backstory of this, which is absolutely
[2:43]fascinating.
[2:44]It's actually kind of a mom's don't have time to read or write type of origin story,
[2:50]because I got the idea for this book 22 years ago, I have four children.
[2:55]We were, we drove up from Massachusetts to Canada on a road trip.
[2:59]My kids were 10, 7, 3, and 0, like we literally had a newborn.
[3:04]I am not sure why I agreed to this.
[3:05]It's all very fuzzy in my mind.
[3:07]I think it was some kind of euphoria after birth, and, but I ended up taking out a whole
[3:14]stack of books for kids about Canadian history, which I thought I would share with
[3:18]my three sons, the three older boys.
[3:21]And of course we got up to Canada and like nobody was interested in reading those books
[3:25]with me, but I was not getting any sleep because I was nursing the baby all night, and
[3:31]I read all of them, you know, these stacks of books that were sort of like YA books about
[3:36]Canadian history or children's books.
[3:39]And I stumbled upon this passage about this young woman, Marguerite, who sailed to the
[3:44]New World of Miss Maroon, and it was literally like in parentheses, in and the side, in the
[3:48]middle of a chapter about Cartier's voyages to New France, which is Canada.
[3:54]And I was like, wait, what, you know, I'm sort of deliriously like sleep deprived with
[3:59]this newborn in my lap, you know, looking at this.
[4:02]And I was thinking, this is such a great thing to write about.
[4:05]this would be such a fun thing to do for a novel.
[4:09]But the whole idea of writing a novel set in the 16th century stressed me out, I can't
[4:15]imagine why.
[4:17]This is like, I am, I was not as dark a novelist, I wrote contemporary novels and the
[4:22]idea of doing that kind of research, and you know, in my sleep deprived state, I sort
[4:27]of put it aside, but I kept, it was always in the back of my head all that time.
[4:32]And you know, kids got older, they grew up, and really my youngest was, I think, a senior
[4:38]in high school.
[4:39]No, she was in college by the time I returned to this idea.
[4:45]But I was still, at that point I had more time to write and to do research and to read,
[4:50]to do all the reading required to, you know, write a book like this.
[4:53]But I was still, you know, wondering how to tell the story.
[4:58]And I was intimidated by the fact that it was so long ago.
[5:01]And that's so little, and was known about this woman.
[5:04]And I thought, let me just try to write the first sentence, you know, and I got away from
[5:09]my computer and I just had a notebook and I just started writing my hand, just trying
[5:13]to write the first sentence, which I thought could be in the first person like Robinson
[5:16]Grusso type story, where she was telling her story.
[5:20]And I just kept writing this first sentence over and over again, until I got to sort of
[5:25]the 20th iteration of it.
[5:29]And I heard her sort of saying, I never knew my mother.
[5:32]She died the night that I was born.
[5:35]So we passed each other in the dark.
[5:37]And all of a sudden I heard this woman's voice speaking to me.
[5:41]And at that point, I just had the confidence to keep going as if she was telling me the
[5:47]story and I was transcribing it.
[5:50]Of course, it's more complicated than that because you have to figure out the structure
[5:53]of the book and other issues.
[5:55]But really that was the key for me just to having the courage to write this book.
[6:00]To ever think, like hearing you say that, I'm like, maybe she really was speaking to you.
[6:05]And maybe this is the universe and the way that these things work and that like writers
[6:10]be really are just like vehicles for stories that are out there, right?
[6:15]It's like other world.
[6:16]Yeah.
[6:17]I mean, there may be something to that honestly.
[6:19]And there's definitely something to the fact that stories and books have to be written
[6:25]when they're ready to be written, you know, even if I'd had all the time in the world
[6:29]when I was younger 22 years ago, I might not have been able to write this novel.
[6:35]I might have need to grow up a lot more and to have experienced a lot more in order
[6:39]to bring that to this book.
[6:41]So I do, I am kind of a believer that there's a, there's a time, you know, and sometimes
[6:46]it may require some patience and some waiting and maybe doing other things first.
[6:52]But imagination works in mysterious ways.
[6:54]So.
[6:55]Yeah.
[6:56]You have one scene where not to give things away or whatever, but where we're someone
[7:01]is saying, like, I've, I can't sleep without this person.
[7:05]I've never really been alone, like this is the worst feeling.
[7:09]And like just tapping into that human emotion of anyone who has lost anyone for any reason
[7:15]or is missing someone for any reason, like these things transcend time.
[7:21]It's not like people living back then didn't feel love and loss and all the feelings.
[7:27]I totally agree with you, you know, and, and when I heard her speaking, it was sort
[7:32]of, she was a real person just talking to me like a person, not like a historical figure
[7:37]or not like somebody who lived hundreds of years ago.
[7:40]And those emotions, people did feel lost.
[7:42]They did fall in love.
[7:44]They didn't feel betrayed.
[7:46]Women did struggle just as they do now, worse, in fact, in many ways, you know.
[7:52]And yeah, and that moment was very real to me that this young woman had never had never
[7:59]been alone.
[8:00]And I was really interested.
[8:01]I'm glad you brought that up because I was really interested in this whole idea of what
[8:06]it was like to be completely isolated.
[8:08]Actually, I haven't told this to people, but, you know, that title, Isola, which beats
[8:12]island in Italian is from an Italian map that they used.
[8:17]But I was really fascinated by that word because it also sounds like I alone, I solo,
[8:23]but in a feminine form.
[8:25]And she has to, she has to experience life without the people that she loves and the people
[8:32]who raised her and the world that she knows.
[8:35]And somehow come back from that.
[8:38]So, as a novelist, that was what really, really interested me.
[8:41]Wow.
[8:42]And they say, no man is an island.
[8:44]And yet, yeah, sometimes you are stuck on an island.
[8:47]Yes, it's a woman.
[8:49]Yes.
[8:51]My gosh, even her voyage there.
[8:53]I'm like, the weevals and I mean, this is like, whoa, this is not fun.
[8:58]I'm like, get me off the boat, please, take me off the boat.
[9:02]Yeah, get me off the boat.
[9:03]And when she finds out what is like off the boat, isn't that hard?
[9:07]It's hard.
[9:08]Like, maybe the boat wasn't so bad.
[9:10]I mean, the power to withstand the most difficult circumstances, I mean, that is what we
[9:18]have to draw on today and every day, right?
[9:22]You might not be on an island by ourselves, but we can certainly feel that way sometimes.
[9:27]And how do you get through it?
[9:29]Yeah.
[9:30]Absolutely.
[9:31]What do you draw upon?
[9:32]You know?
[9:33]What do you draw upon?
[9:34]My gosh.
[9:35]Is there ever sort of other viewpoints, third person, like other ways to tell the story?
[9:41]Or were you just like, no, I'm in this is this is that I was committed to the first
[9:46]person for this one.
[9:47]And I usually write in the third person myself.
[9:49]I think it was partly because I was obsessed with Robinson Crusoe when I was a child.
[9:53]And I had this idea that, you know, he was a man, first of all, he wasn't escaping
[9:58]the kinds of things that she was escaping.
[10:00]you know, when he got to his island. He was also on a relatively tropical warm island. You know,
[10:05]one of the big problems he had was the sun was burning his skin all the time and he made a
[10:09]parasol and she's on a subarctic island. So, you know, I was really, I was really interested
[10:16]in that. I was also really interested in her as a woman that one of the things she realizes is that
[10:22]she's obviously in great danger on the island, but she was in danger at home. You know, she was
[10:28]not safe where she was and I was interested in exploring that. You know, Robinson Crusoe, when
[10:33]he gets saved, he can go back to being a white male, you know. Wow. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Sam and Marguerite, as
[10:43]you mentioned in your note at the end are both survivors, right? They, why do you think you
[10:49]are drawn to stories of survivors like this? I think as a novelist, I've always been interested
[10:55]in questions like sort of, how do you live? What's the best way to live? But also more than that
[11:00]sort of, why do you live? What does it for? And when you explore somebody struggling to survive
[11:07]in different contexts, you are, it's a way to frame that question in a clear way.
[11:14]You know, at some point Marguerite says, you know, she, she learned how to survive on that island
[11:20]to a certain extent. You know, she, she could, she learned hunt. She learned to keep warm to sustain
[11:27]herself, but she had, but it was so much work and it was so hard. Then the question became in isolation,
[11:32]how, why do you do it? What's the point of it? And I was interested in exploring that question.
[11:38]Did you ever like put the book down and be like, okay, now I just need to like wrap
[11:41]myself in a blanket and yeah, indulge in the creatures of home because yeah, like I felt very lucky.
[11:47]I mean, to have heat. Yeah, exactly. Heat in the house. Yeah. Yeah, like creature cut. Let's not
[11:53]take anything for granted. Yeah. No. No. So if Marguerite were to meet Sam, what would that, and they
[12:01]were living in the same time? What do you think their conversation would go like? Oh, well, they might
[12:06]have some good talks about climbing rocks. I think Sam would actually be very impressed with her.
[12:15]I think Sam, I think she, you know, Sam was not a big reader. She's one of those kids, it doesn't
[12:20]like to read. And she's always like, why do people read those long books about people who lived
[12:25]a long time ago? And I think that Marguerite, she would have thought like she had credibility,
[12:31]you know, this is a person who had to fight, fight her way. And I think so Sam, I think could have
[12:38]learned from Marguerite. I think Marguerite would have had to catch up a lot to figure out Sam's
[12:43]world, of course. It's many hundreds of years later. But yeah. And they could have talked a little
[12:48]bit about some of the men in their lives, actually. True. Yes. Very true. So you, I mean, one of these
[12:58]books is today, one is so long ago. Yeah. Totally different skill sets, recreating worlds versus
[13:05]transcribing our current world, which are you going to next? Like, which are you going to keep,
[13:12]going through different times or different time altogether? Are you just going to let the
[13:15]women kind of find you and speak to you? All of the above. I actually now that I've written one
[13:22]historical novel, I don't feel that same stress anymore. I feel like it's like, oh wait, I love doing
[13:30]research. I love reading for a year. You know, so I had forgotten that about myself. And so
[13:37]I think I've gotten over that hump of just being completely intimidated. But I'll never stop writing
[13:43]about writing contemporary stories about people who live now either. I mean, one thing you could say
[13:48]is that all novels are historical novels, right? I remember, you know, if it happened last week,
[13:54]that's history. And there are many interpretations. If you asked your friend what happened last week,
[13:58]she may have a very different idea of that conversation than you do. So that's one way of looking at it.
[14:04]Or, you know, I taught a class where one of my undergraduates said, I want to write a historical
[14:09]novel sitting like the mid 2010s. And I said, okay. I know at our publishing house, I say that we
[14:19]don't publish historical fiction, which I say is before 1976, because that's when I was born.
[14:26]Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, I don't know. We got to cut it off somewhere.
[14:30]But for this kid, like, you know, 2000 was before she was born.
[14:34]I know. It was so busy. Oh my gosh. It was so old every day.
[14:39]Totally. And then she was like, could you help me with like some of the details of like
[14:43]times those times, you know? Oh my gosh. My son, I have four kids too. And my youngest son
[14:52]is 10 about to turn 10. And I was putting him to bed and he was like, finding the gray hair that
[14:57]the colorist I guess missed in trying to like mask the mask the gray. And he was like, you know,
[15:03]like, he's like, you're, you're almost 50. And I'm not like in the double digits yet, you're getting
[15:09]so old. And I was like, shut up. Yeah. I don't understand when you're older. You'll, you'll.
[15:16]Yeah. Like you're lucky to be here when you die. Exactly. It's going to happen to you too with
[15:21]your kids. Yeah. Not willing. I don't like, how do your kids feel about your writing and what
[15:26]is your relationship like with them now and, you know, hardening back to those early days?
[15:31]Oh, it's so funny. So my kids think it's really funny that I came up with this idea on that
[15:36]trip, of course. And some of them are too, too young to remember that trip of, you know,
[15:40]my oldest son has read the book and loved it. He's actually an economist. Oh, he turned into an
[15:46]economist. And he's completely fascinated by the business of publishing, which is as you know, bananas.
[15:52]So if he could just sort it out for us, that would be good. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
[16:00]So he's an economist, but he reads everything. I will be, I will say, I didn't raise any
[16:05]novelists or any writers per se, fiction writers, but I did raise four readers and he does read
[16:10]everything. My second son has the other three haven't read the book yet. And my daughter's really
[16:16]funny. She read Sam. And then people said to her, like, how are reading that game? Oh, do you
[16:21]read all of your mother's work? And she said, I only read the books that are dedicated to me.
[16:27]I don't know if she probably won't read this one. But it is going to be published in England,
[16:32]and she is actually working in London. So I think at that point, she might be more motivated
[16:37]because she said, like, I will be a press agent in London. I will bring all my friends
[16:42]if you do an event. So, you know, well, that's good. So they share me on in their way, you know,
[16:46]that's three sort of boots on the ground. By the way, I love on social, how are you doing? These
[16:52]like Q&A short videos. Where did that come about? I love it. Honestly, it came about because
[16:58]sometimes I visit colleges and universities and students will like raise their hand and they ask
[17:02]like great questions. And there's often not time to answer them all. Or I think, oh, shoot,
[17:09]I should have said such and such after the event is over. And so I started collecting questions
[17:14]that the students would ask or that readers sent to me. And I just thought I would, you know,
[17:20]post some things when I was in a quiet moment. And there weren't other people, you know, waiting.
[17:27]So I've enjoyed it. I like, I don't teach very much, but I like talking about literature and talking
[17:33]about craft and, you know, answering those things because it is a mysterious process for a lot of
[17:38]people. Well, I love it. Thank you. No, it's great to have this short, short form sort of
[17:43]answers to questions and use yourself as a resource. I mean, people, you know, it's, it's so
[17:49]just, it's generous, honestly, just to put it all out there. So that's good. Okay. Any projects
[17:54]coming up? We should know about that. I actually have, I have a contemporary book about a Jewish
[18:00]American family that's coming out. I think in 2026 after this one. And I'm really excited about it.
[18:08]Some of, some of that book has been published in the New Yorker. And it's about, and this is
[18:12]very much sort of of our time, you know, yes. I years ago, I wrote a book called The Family
[18:17]Markowitz, which was a book of interlocked short stories about a Jewish American family. And I wanted
[18:23]to do what a contemporary family. And it's a book. And it takes, it's in the third person. And it
[18:30]from the point of view of the parents, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the children. It's
[18:33]those three generations of this Jewish family. And it's sort of a what it's like to live now in,
[18:39]you know, in this world in America. And that's a very Jewish book. For those readers who were sort
[18:44]of like, you started out by writing very Jewish fiction. And now you're not doing so much, you know,
[18:49]and of course, Isola. There's only one Jewish character in this book in Isola. And it is a book of
[18:55]Psalms. You know, it has a lot of liturgy. That is of course Jewish. But this book is really about
[19:01]contemporary Jewish life. So I'm excited about that one, which is to come after Isola.
[19:06]Can't wait to read that. What's it called? Can you do you have a title? I'm still working on the
[19:10]title. Okay. But I would love to talk to you about it. Okay. Well, make a date for 2020. Yeah.
[19:16]I'm like, do I ever make any progress? I'm still sitting here in the same chair talking
[19:21]all the others. Like new books. Like years later. Okay. Oh my gosh. No, we're so grateful to you.
[19:26]No, I should like at least move desks. I don't know. But anyway, I get so excited. I mean, I
[19:31]really am excited to read that book too. So I love the way you write. Anyway, congratulations.
[19:36]Congratulations, Isola. I can't wait for it to be out in the world and all of that. So congrats.
[19:42]And I'm so glad that's it. Thanks so much, Sibi. Thanks for your lead found. Thank you.
[19:47]All right. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you. You too. Bye.
[19:51]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Sibi. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
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[20:05]Oh, and bye the books.